Prevalence of a ‘deep system’ of education
This article is authored by Amruth G Kumar, professor, School of Education, Central University of Kerala.
As per the 80th round of the NSSO report no. 595, entitled Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education 2025, the average expenditure per student on school education (at all levels) in India is ₹12,616. To fathom this figure in the context of India’s project of Viksit Bharat@2047, a comparison with the expenditure on education by developed countries across the world would be helpful. A comparison of a couple of OECD countries brings out interesting results. To make this comparison ₹12,616 needs to be converted to dollars. A consumption-based PPP factor (by National accounts of National statistical office) gives a figure of $ 842. As per the report ‘Education at a glance (2023) published by OECD, U.S. spend $15,186 and U.K. spend $13,141 per student for school education. The OECD average of all member countries is $11,352. This shows that India’s per child spending for school education (at all levels together) is substantially lower compared to the major OECD countries. In spite of this substantially low spending for education, there exist huge variations in the expenditure for education per student in the government, aided and private schools across the country. These variations point to a serious threat to the question of social justice in educational opportunity.
The NSSO data offers more insightful results on per student expenditure in various types of schools. For government schools, per student expenditure is ₹2,863. In the case of government aided schools, it is ₹15,364. Aided schools incur 5.4 times more expenditure on per student compared to government schools. Naturally the extra amount becomes the responsibility of parents. This gap nullifies the scope of government aided schools as a tool for equal opportunity in school education. Private unaided schools augment this gap. A student in a private school has to spend 10-fold more than government schools, ie. ₹28,693 for per student education. It is evident that the entire amount of money spent in private unaided schools flow from the pockets of parents, for which they would definitely seek some benefits compared to the government and aided schools. Quality education is heavily dependent on highly qualified teachers and their effective deployment for teaching (at least not under utilised!), material and digital infrastructure. Money matters in all these. Quality in school education has become a ‘commodity’ in India that can be consumed by those who has money. This perfectly aligns with the logic of a neoliberal market in school education, where there is a drift from education as a social responsibility to a private responsibility.
Students enrolled in government schools are hailing from economically backward sections, and a lion share of them fall in the socially backward communities as well. The scant spending on their education deprives them from the minimum quality education ensured to the citizens through RTE (2010). The spending differences in the schooling orient students in these different schools to different consumption habits for the future. The bag, shoes, uniform, pencil, pen and stationeries tacitly conveys about the pigeonholes waiting for them in the future.
Now let us look into how this spending gap further deepens through private coaching and tuitions. The same NSSO data shows that the percentage of students who have private coaching during the current academic year at primary level is 22.9%, at middle school level is 29.6%, at secondary level is 37.8% and at Higher secondary level is 37.0%. At all levels together it is 27.0%. Average expenditure on private coaching per student during the current academic year for secondary and higher secondary level is ₹4,183 and ₹6,384. In case of government schools, expenditure for educating a single student is just ₹2,863. This amount includes expenditure at all levels starting from preprimary to higher secondary. To our surprise, the per student coaching fee far surpasses this amount at secondary level. This shows the dismal spending for students at government schools.
As private coaching is affordable only for students from affluent families, those in private schools, this strengthens their prospects in high achievement in public examinations and ranking in various high-stake tests, like NEET, JEE, CUET. High stake tests in India, in turn, are indexes of socio-economic status, not the achievement and aptitude of the students. These dismal spending for students in government schools and heavy spending for private coaching by students from affluent families shows that there is a robust parallel system of education prevailing in India, which is more formal than the formal. This suspends the potential of education as a tool for engaging social inequality and addressing social justice. Instead, education, in such conditions, will remain as a tool for the status quo and for reproducing existing inequality. These conditions indicate a ‘deep education system’, functioning in the structure of our national system of education. Only a negligible minority of students from the government and aided schools overcome these conditions and become exemptions. Those few students, who are the best models, who in spite of their disadvantages excelled in education, are good examples of how to overcome such hurdles, but they cannot be considered for generalisation.
The Viksit Bharat @2047 project of the government needs to seriously rework on the spending earmarked for education per student in schools. Viksit Bharat would be possible only if the government address this expenditure gap that adversely affect pupil hailing from disadvantaged families. As public schools are mostly under the state governments, and education being a concurrent item, a coordinated effort is needed to address this issue. The impact of various schemes like Sarva Siksha Abhiyan to Samagra Siksha Abhiyan need to be critically audited for their impact on improving public education system. Raising the spending for public schools run by the government and substantial support to aided schools shall be launched to make a sensible dream of Viksit Bharat. The road to the Viksit nation shall be paved by a high-quality system of education. Earmarking 6% of GDP for education sector, a long pending demand since Kothari Commission (1966). At least 4% of the national GDP for school education is what the time required.
This article is authored by Amruth G Kumar, professor, School of Education, Central University of Kerala.
